WASHINGTON: The Pentagon says a top Daesh leader in Iraq’s Anbar province has been killed by a coalition airstrike.
Pentagon press secretary Peter Cook says Abu Wahib and three others were killed when their vehicle was struck on May 6 in Rutba. He says Wahib’s death is a blow to the group’s leadership.
A senior US official said it was an American airstrike.
Cook says Wahib was a former member of Al-Qaeda in Iraq and has appeared in Daesh execution videos. There have been unconfirmed reports in the past suggesting Wahib was targeted by strikes, but this is the first time the Pentagon has said he was killed.
Meanwhile, Daesh said on Tuesday it had downed a Syrian Army helicopter in a desert area of central Syria where heavy fighting is going on, the militant group and a monitor said.
Amaq, a news agency associated with Daesh, said the helicopter was shot down near in the Palmyra desert between Homs and Palmyra city.
The terrorists were also disrupting army supply lines and attacking the Mahr and Jazal gas fields, in an area which contains the country’s largest gas reserves and facilities that once generated much of its electricity needs.
The British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights confirmed the terrorists were gaining new ground. It said that on Tuesday they seized a deserted military barracks 10 km north of the Syrian military’s T4 airport, near where the helicopter was reportedly downed.